


Eucalyptus

by yeaka



Series: Yutopian Zoo [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Animal Ears, Animal Traits, Ficlet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 05:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12764163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeaka/pseuds/yeaka
Summary: Victor visits his favourite Japanese serow at the zoo.





	Eucalyptus

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is set in the same partial-animal AU as some of my other ficlets, but it’s stand-alone and you don’t need to read them for this. (Though this is set after [Visitor](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12631662).)
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own Yuri on Ice or any of its contents, and I’m not making any money off this.

The Japanese serow enclosure is relatively large, and Victor thinks it might even intersect with some of the other herbivore exhibits, though he hasn’t seen them interacting at all. The serows seem to keep to themselves, at least, the one that he likes does. It takes several trips around the chest-high chain-link fence that encircles the main area before he spots the one he wants. Then he can finally stop where he is, over to the left side by the restroom building, thankfully devoid of any other patrons—Victor’s come right at dinner time, and the serow exhibit doesn’t seem to be a popular one anyway.

He finds it _fascinating_. He lowers his heavy shoulder bag to the ground so he can cup both hands around his mouth and call, “ _Yuuri_!” 

The figure half-hidden between the trees startles. A shy pair of chocolate-brown eyes peers around the thick trunk they hide behind, sizing Victor up, and fortunately seem to conclude that he’s no threat. Yuuri emerges from the lush foliage, meandering carefully down the hill towards where Victor stands. The other two serows are nowhere to be seen, probably off sleeping in the cave near the back, or maybe away with handlers or something else entirely. Victor doesn’t know and doesn’t really care. He came to the zoo for _inspiration_ , and Yuuri’s the only thing that’s come even closer. 

Yuuri still hesitates a few meters away. He seems to war with himself, and Victor understands—he thinks that if _he_ were born half animal, he’d want nothing to do with presumptuous humans that carted him off to display.

But then, he does like entertaining. So perhaps he’d be more like the other ‘Yuri,’ the scrappy one with tiger ears and a striped tail that’s always roaring from the large cat exhibit. It makes Victor chuckle just to think about, and the noise makes Yuuri’s grey ears twitch. They poke up between his jet-black hair, almost pointed, with two small, subtly curved horns resting between. A small tuft of a tail in the back is the only other thing that shows he isn’t _human_ , although Victor knows from past experience that he has hidden glands in his cheeks that can secrete a sticky substance for marking territory. Victor had to look the meaning of that one up. And Yuuri looked horribly embarrassed at the time, but Victor just laughed, thinking it cute.

Yuuri’s _incredibly_ cute. When he starts moving again, he looks mildly more determined, his gaze fixed on Victor as his bare feet pick through the underbrush of his home. It looks cold, like the thin black coverall that hides the rest of his body, but he said he preferred things colder—mountains and snow. Victor tries not to think about what Yuuri would be like in the frigid Russian winter, up at the little cabin his family owns, nestled in a rolling valley.

Yuuri finally reaches the fence, and he murmurs in barely accented English, “Hello, Victor.”

Because Victor’s worse at Japanese and he doesn’t know if Yuuri speaks any Russian, he answers in more of the same: “Hello, Yuuri.”

A faint smile twitches at the corners of Yuuri’s lips. Victor has a flash of light-headedness from that alone. 

He covers it by leaning down to scoop his bag off the floor, then rooting around inside. He emerges with a random case, which he pops open to reveal a pair of silver-rimmed glasses. He thought they’d match Yuuri’s fur nicely. Discarding the plastic case back into the bag, he turns them to Yuuri and leans over the fence, hovering them just in front of Yuuri’s surprised face.

Mouth open in a little ‘o,’ Yuuri goes cross-eyed looking at the middle. Maybe they don’t give them to half-animals here, but surely he’s seen humans walk by in them. Victor chirps, “Remember when I told you I came to get inspiration for my skating from nature, and I asked if you were graceful, and you said you had bad eyesight? Well, I’d really like to see some of that grace, so I thought I’d take the liberty of fetching you a pair of glasses.”

Yuuri blinks at Victor, cheeks slowly staining pink. It takes him a second to manage, “You... you didn’t have to...”

Victor knows that. He nudges the glasses against Yuuri’s noses and insists, “Try them.”

Slender fingers lifting up to hold them in place, Yuuri does. When their hands brush, Victor quickly withdraws his—he hadn’t expected Yuuri to feel so _warm_. He must’ve forgotten that. He wants to pet Yuuri again, even though Yuuri’s no dog, but he resists in favour of watching Yuuri look about in his new spectacles. Then he scrunches his eyes together and mutters, “Um... I-I’m sorry, but they’re... making me sort of dizzy...”

“Not to worry,” Victor retorts, plucking them right off. Yuuri takes a step back in surprise, blinking rapidly at the world again, while Victor goes back to the bag for another pair, setting the failed ones aside. He holds the next pair out, and Yuuri quietly takes them. 

He has a similar reaction, and Victor whips them off in exchange for a third.

As Yuuri holds the very bottoms of the lenses from below, he asks, “How... how many do you have with you...?”

“Put it this way—they’re better prescribed, but I’ve got enough in here that the odds are pretty good we’ll find a strength that works for you.” Yuuri gives him an absolutely bewildered look, and Victor explains, “I would’ve just asked the zoo staff if they could get you a proper prescription, but that way, they might’ve said no.” He gives Yuuri a broad smile, because that should clear everything up, but Yuuri just blushes deeper and looks aside, down towards his shuffling feet.

He murmurs, “Thank you,” and then, before Victor can ask, “these actually do help. Everything’s so... sharp. Thank you.” He returns to give Victor a grateful smile that makes Victor’s heart skip a beat. And Yuuri doesn’t look away this time, but gazes steadily into Victor’s eyes, until Victor fears a similar blush is creeping onto his cheeks. 

He recovers by distracting himself—he leans over the fence, reaching out to pet Yuuri behind the ear again, and Yuuri makes a soft crooning noise and leans right into the touch. Victor’s not even sure if it’s a serow thing or a _human_ thing, like getting an intimate massage from someone special. Either way, Victor provides it. And he makes a mental note of which pair Yuuri picked, so he can bring another just like it if the handlers confiscate this set, and at least he can make sure Yuuri’s always able to see while he’s around. 

“How have you been?” he asks, when it’s fallen too silent—or as silent as a full zoo can ever get, with screaming tigers and squawking parrots in the background. 

He half wonders how all the feral carnivore noises don’t _terrify_ the serows, even though Victor doesn’t think a human-tiger would eat another human-animal, but Yuuri seems accustomed to it. Yuuri murmurs wistfully, eyes half lidded from Victor’s ministrations, “Oh, fine, I suppose.”

“Do you always have to wear those awful coveralls?” Victor tries, because the shapeless material really does waste Yuuri’s good figure. He can’t even tell if it’s all one part or a separate set of trousers and a shirt that just blend together.

Yuuri repeats dazedly, “Awful?”

“You’d look much cuter in a sweater or something,” Victor decides, talking without thinking again. Then he hums to himself and thinks of just the one, hanging in the back of his closet, that would probably be a little too long on Yuuri but all the more adorable for it. “A big beige knit one.”

Yuuri makes a deep noise in the back of his throat. Victor doesn’t know how to interpret that, but Yuuri’s blush hasn’t lessoned. Instead of responding, Yuuri asks, “How are you? How is... figure... skating?”

Something about the way Yuuri says it makes Victor wonder if he even knows what figure skating is. Maybe Yuuri never strayed nearer enough to the towns to see humans do it. And now that he’s in a zoo, he probably never well.

It makes Victor sad to think about, and he answers, just as disheartened, “Not well enough. I’m still lacking a muse.”

But that isn’t quite true. He thinks he _may_ have found one here. When he thinks of showing Yuuri figure skating for the first time, of bringing him out on the ice to teach him, to see how graceful serows really can be in the right circumstances, fills him with a flame he feared he lost. There’s a lake up by his family’s cabin, one that’s frozen over for most of the year. It’s too easy to picture Yuuri sitting there, _in Victor’s sweater_ , watching Victor’s routines and waiting for Victor’s lessons. And then Yuuri could go bounding off into the mountains or wherever he liked, and wander back down from time to time to mark Victor’s cabin with that strange substance of his. 

Victor knows he’s getting ahead of himself. It’s hard to _not_ just follow his heart, especially without Yakov around to scold him for it. But Yuuri lives in a very different world than him, and Victor withdraws his hand, despite Yuuri’s disappointed look. He tells himself he should leave but instead asks, “Are you allowed to leave your exhibit for lunch?”

If possible, Yuuri turns even redder, and he mumbles, “I eat leaves.”

Victor tilts his head curiously and decides, “Alright, then I’ll go get some food from the concession stand while you pick your leaves, and we’ll meet back here.”

Yuuri smiles, nodding eagerly.

Victor smiles back and goes.


End file.
